Life in the Fast Lane-Viewed From the Confluence Lens

The most striking ideas in systems are abstractions such as virtual memory, sockets, or packet scheduling. Algorithmic is the servant of abstraction, allowing the performance of the system to approach that of the underlying hardware. The authors survey the trajectory of network algorithmic, starting with a focus on speed and scale in the 1990s to measurement and security in the 2000s, using what they call the confluence lens. Confluence sees interdisciplinary work as a merger of two or more disciplines made compelling by an inflection point in the real world, while also producing genuinely transformed ideas.